How Do You Make a View-Master Movie?

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The film's producers explain how.

By Scott Collura & Eric Goldman

It was recently announced that Transformers and Star Trek writers Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci will be producing a film for DreamWorks based on the View-Master, the decades-old Fisher-Price/Mattel toy.

IGN caught up with the pair last night at the Television Critics Association Fringe panel when the topic of the film came up.

"It's funny," Kurtzman says. "When we signed on to do Transformers, there was this incredibly cynical reaction to the idea that, 'Oh, it's just a toy line.' And I would hope that by now, people would know we would never walk into something if we didn't actually have a real story behind it. Without giving away any details about the story, certain toys should never be movies -- and certain toys should be. And I think we spent a lot of time talking about the difference between those."

"And it wasn't born in sin," Orci adds. "What happened was we had a friend who wrote on Fringe, Brad Caleb Kane, who had a pitch that he wanted to do this movie. He wasn't even thinking of View-Master. And then our company got a look at it and thought, 'We could actually connect this with View-Master,' who we know happens to be looking [for a movie idea]. So it wasn't like, 'Let's come up with a View-Master movie!' There was a great idea … there and it was perfect to marry with View-Master."

As for the fact that unlike G.I. Joe or the Transformers, the View-Master is not a character… well, the producers aren't too stressed about that.

"It depends on how you define character," Kurtzman says. "Because some characters are obviously human. Other characters are… The Enterprise is a character in Star Trek. But the Enterprise never speaks."

And by the way, Kurtzman and Orci say they'd love to see the film in 3-D.